"The new owners fired everybody, then they hired new personnel at half the salary," said Díaz, a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 30. His job search since then has been fruitless, and that pains him all the more now that Christmas is here.

"I don't have children of my own but I do have 10 nieces and nephews and this Christmas I can't give them anything," Díaz said. "They are small and don't understand why. It hurts."

Still, Díaz considers himself lucky. His mother, three sisters and a brother live in the city and they will get together, not on Christmas Day, but on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve), as is traditional in Latin America, to enjoy a delicious family dinner.

Besides, with some help from his mother, Díaz, not the conformist type, went back to school to finish his B.A. in Education at Lehman College in the Bronx.

"I will graduate in May 2010," Díaz said. "But with the recession, teachers have also been fired and for recent graduates it has become very difficult to get a job."

The current recession has proved to be a ferocious beast and, as a report released Dec. 21 by the Fiscal Policy Institute shows, a complicated one. The institute, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on tax, budget, and economic issues, warns of the emergence of two distinct recessions in the city.

"With each passing day, the disconnect grows. Wall Street is recovering, but in the boroughs and neighborhoods, unemployment has doubled in the past year," said James Parrott, deputy executive director and chief economist at the institute.

More than 400,000 city residents are out of work, and, like Díaz, 40% of them have been jobless for six months or more, the study said. Moreover, the unemployment rate, which was 10.3% citywide in September, will probably stay in double digits for many more months.

Even though it was reported that the unemployment rate in the city dropped to 10% in November, the FPI concluded that doesn't mean that the job market is getting any better. The change, the data shows, was due to people leaving the labor force, not to an increase in the number of jobs.

"It bothers me when I hear people say that the recession is over," Díaz said. "What I see every day is that people keep losing their jobs. As long as people can't find work the recession is not over."

He is, of course, correct. But this is a time of hope and good wishes.

This Christmas, let's wish for good paying jobs and much happiness for Díaz, his family and all New Yorkers in the coming months.